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Cornell Conference
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Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 14—“Using Numerical Simulation to Test the “Mutation-Count” Hypothesis”—Abstract
Paper: MCM [mutation-count mechanism] does not appear to occur under most biologically realistic conditions, and so is not a generally applicable evolutionary mechanism. MCM is not generally capable of stopping deleterious mutation accumulation in most natural populations.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 14—“Using Numerical Simulation to Test the “Mutation-Count” Hypothesis” —Discussion excerpt
Paper: It is widely understood that probability selection is what is generally happening in nature. Truncation selection is the type of artificial selection employed consciously by plant and animal breeders, and is not generally applicable to natural populations …
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 13—“Selection Threshold Severely Constrains Capture of Beneficial Mutations”—Concluding Comments excerpt
Researchers: Our findings raise a very interesting theoretical problem — in a large genome, how do the millions of low-impact (yet functional) nucleotides arise? It is universally agreed that selection works very well for high-impact mutations. However, …
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 13—“Selection Threshold Severely Constrains Capture of Beneficial Mutations”—Abstract
Researchers: In all experiments that employ biologically reasonable parameters, we observe high STb values and a general failure of selection to preferentially amplify the large majority of beneficial mutations.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 12—“Can Purifying Natural Selection Preserve Biological Information?”—Excerpt
Authors: The primary findings of this study are that the selection threshold problem is real and that it is more serious than generally recognized. These findings are very robust.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 12—“Can Purifying Natural Selection Preserve Biological Information?”—Abstract
Authors: Indeed, we find that under most realistic circumstances, the large majority of harmful mutations are essentially unaffected by natural selection and continue to accumulate unhindered. This finding has major theoretical implications …
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 11—Not Junk After All—Conclusion
Jonathan Wells: So non-protein-coding regions of DNA that some previously regarded as “junk”turn out to encode biological information that greatly increases the known information-carrying capacity of DNA.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 11—Not Junk After All —Abstract
Jonathan Wells: Clearly, the notion of “junk DNA” is obsolete, and the amount of biological information in the genome far exceeds the information in protein-coding regions.
Gene gun inventor John Sanford on what Darwin got wrong
A key difficulty with evolution theories based on Darwin (and make no mistake, that’s the majority*) is that such theories are based on an outdated view of how things work, but millions of people now make their living, in whole or in part, fronting such a view.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 10—Biological Information and Genetic Theory: Introductory Comments—Excerpt
To facilitate discussion, we are publishing the abstracts and conclusions/summaries of the 24 papers from the Cornell Conference on the Origin of Biological Information here at Uncommon Descent, with cumulative links to previous papers at the bottom of each page. You can get from anywhere to anywhere in the system. Note: A blow-by-blow account of Read More…
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 10—Biological Information and Genetic Theory: Introductory Comments—Abstract
Sanford: Mendel probably had some vague notion that these genetic packages somehow might contain a very simple type of “biological information”. But he could never have guessed that these genetic units which he observed were actually precisely-specified instructions, encoded by language, with each gene being comparable in complexity to a book.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 9—Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems—Conclusion
In this [McIntosh’s] paradigm, the information is non-material and constrains the local thermodynamics to be in a non-equilibrium state of raised free energy. It is the information which is the active ingredient, and the matter and energy are passive to the laws of thermodynamics within the system.
Open Mike: Cornell OBI Conference Chapter 9—Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems—Abstract
McIntosh: Starting from the paradigm of information being defined by non-material arrangement and coding, one can then postulate the idea of laws of information exchange which have some parallels with the laws of thermodynamics which undergird such an approach.